Joy

Written and Recorded in 1989

In the beginning of 1989, I took a time out from writing and recording my own music for about a couple of months. I don’t remember exactly why but probably I was occupied with some other things to do, especially as a student so that I could not afford taking time for making music at that period. Then, I went back to sitting at my piano in March and experienced something unusual – to witness new ideas emerging spontaneously one after another through random playing on the piano. When these ideas were organised to form a composition, writing of this tune was simultaneously completed.  Believe it or not, it took less than two weeks in total, to write this complicated composition from scratch. I called it simply Joy, to express my feeling of joy when I play music in general.

   

As Long As I Have to Live

Written in 1993 / Recorded in 1993 and 1994

A simple thing I wrote in mid-1993. This was more about an experiment in arrangement of three instruments; guitar, piano and synthesizer, to exchange each motif in turn. The title came from the associated lyrics I wrote, which had little meaning and removed from this video edition, as usual. The tune became one of flagship songs for my band called Culotte, at that time, because playing it was quite easy and I could cover a missing keyboardist’s part when we played it live (as you can see in this video). Moreover, in my perspective, it was genuine fun to play things like this with the band.

MIXOYOXIM

Written and Recorded in 1989

The main ideas for this piece of music spontaneously popped up while I was trying out the effect of a digital delay pedal plugged to my guitar in spring of 1989. When I decided to use the sampled echo sounds to fill the upbeats, I thought it would be more effective to separate the original guitar sound to one channel, and echo sound generated from the effect pedal to the other channel completely, to form a virtual symmetry consists of sounds mixed in stereo. Once this rule has been established, it didn’t take long before I completed writing the entire material including the guitar solo section, which was written on the sheet to carefully make sure each note including echoed ones are placed correctly harmonious to the flow of chord progression assigned to the bass and organ.

The title of this track was inspired by the album cover and title of AOXOMOXOA by The Grateful Dead. I wanted the tune’s title to represent its content – musical expression of symmetry – so I picked up five alphabetical letters that have symmetry forms and arranged them in this fashion, with slightly implying to a musical term; Mixolydian as well.

A Night in Persia

Written and Recorded in c. 1998

I don’t think I have suffered from any sort of dementia or any other associated mental disorder, at least through my own self-diagnosis, however, at the same time I know I have to admit that I have very little or limited memories on things I wrote or recorded in between 1997 and 1999. To be honest with you, I have no recollection on the audio track of this video until I have recently ‘discovered’ it among other audio sources I had left in the said period of time. All I can remember is, yes I tried to create something ‘oriental’ in those days and I have also discovered seemingly some blue-print versions of this work too. I don’t know why it features my own voice in the beginning, which never reappears in the rest of the recording, or how I made this recording in what manner, where and when…

The title of the track was obviously a reference to the famous jazz classic. The choice of 'Persia', rather than 'Tunisia' owes to my personal tribute to a line from Jim Morrison's When the Music's Over - 'Persian night.'

Yes It Is

Written and Recorded in 1989

As I have gained some experiences in writing pieces of music, a certain notion became clearer to me that to create a well organised Prog Rock tune with its length from six to eight minute long would be one of the most challenging things to do for me. In that sense, I admired a British Prog Rock band called Yes as one of the most successful examples in this particular form of composing style, from some of their landmark achievements such as Roundabout and Siberian Khatru. When I finished demo recording of this tune, I thought I have managed to create one of the successful examples in this sense and decided to call it in this fashion to express my homage to the main source of inspiration and influence. Also, I would like to point out that the idea to use delay effects on the electric piano part was inspired from Jeff Beck’s Blow by Blow album, one of my favourites at that time, though every keyboard part was actually played by a portable mini-key in this recording.

Finally, I would like to apologise for the bad quality of the audio track, caused by damages to the original cassette tape.    

Tell Me

Written in 1994 / Recorded in 1995 and 2014

Basically, the main riff of this tune was written – or rather conceived – while I was on a train journey heading for having a studio session with my band called Culotte, sometime in 1994. By the time I made its initial private demo version at home, I decided to extend the tune by featuring a long jam section in the middle, especially inspired by Creedence Clearwater Revival’s cover version of Suzie Q. Provisional lyrics were also written consisted of repetition of simple lines start with ‘Tell me baby’, in other words, which were almost meaningless stuff. This thing was all about to express my musical taste and to try out some recording experiments, such as reverse tape effects.

For making this video, I used Culotte’s studio version, which was recorded in 1995, as its backing track. Coincidently, it missed a part for another layer of guitar to provide the main riff and secondary solo, and I duly completed the missing part in front of web cam in 2014.

Summer’s Gone

Written and Recorded in 1990

This tune was written in early autumn of 1990, reflecting few incidents took place during the summer that had just gone. In terms of music, it also reflected one of my favourite songs in that summer; Todd Rundgren's Long Flowing Robe. The time of writing this tune coincided with when I was learning built-in tones accommodated in my new synthesizer and I tried out some of my favourite tones in the demo recording such as double bass, harpsichord, and fade-in strings. Lyrics were written, as I have mentioned above, reflecting the incidents in question but now I regard them as minor trivia so that the voice parts are duly removed from this video edition.

The tune was performed live only once by a provisional band I called The Show later in the same year and footage from that performance is also featured in this video. 

The Lunatic Sun

Written in 1993 / Recorded in 1993 and 1994

For about two and a half years before I wrote this tune, I had been focusing on writing Pop stuff for my band called Culotte. Therefore, this was the first tune over six minutes and longer I have written since a theme tune I wrote for my former band called Elegance in early 1991. This change of course for more Prog-oriented direction was rather welcomed by my band mates at that time but, with hindsight, it resulted in to only accelerate the break-up of the band.

As the title of the track indicates, the main theme of this tune was to create a piece of music that unifies a couple of opposite elements. I didn’t specify which represents which, loon/moon or sun, but I prepared a couple of short riffs of 12/8 and 14/8 to be combined in tune towards the end of the composition. The original recordings, especially Culotte’s version, was way too long so that I had to cut short to make this concise edition combined with the initial demo version recorded at home by myself.

For Piano, in A Minor

Written in 1995 / Recorded in 2012

A short composition I wrote for piano consists of merely a repetition of a single idea. The original demo recording also survives with a bit of damage to the magnetic tape, so that I decided to record it again for making this video. Unfortunately, I have to admit that I failed to capture something essential to its original recording at this attempt. There’s something about music that is difficult to explain but, just doing the same movement on an instrument doesn't always result the same, according to my experience here.